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Lucapa fire, 5 July 2026 Lucapa

Out · last detection 10 Jul 2026, 12:40 UTC

The fire started on 5 July 2026 in Lucapa, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,394 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in Lunda Norte since 2016 (of 411 with a page). Number 51 in Angola in 2026, of 485.

Burnt area
19,394ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
5 Jul 2026 – 14 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
5 Jul
2026
Heat detections
211
in a single hotspot: 363 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Jul 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jul14 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

5678910

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high
38km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 51 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,425 ha in 2016, 4,205 ha in 2017, 2,213 ha in 2018, 5,317 ha in 2019, 8,671 ha in 2020, 1,048 ha in 2021, 4,039 ha in 2022, 4,149 ha in 2023, 3,109 ha in 2024, 784 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,012 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Lucapa where it started
    19,491 ha reached on 4 Jul
    1.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
4 Jul 32.0 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Jul 31.7 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Jul 31.4 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Jul 30.8 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Jul 30.0 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Jul 30.6 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Jul 31.1 °C 22 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Jul 31.0 °C 20 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Jul 31.7 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Jul 32.4 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Jul 32.2 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Jul after 31.3 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Jul after 29.9 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Jul after 29.0 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Jul after 30.1 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Jul after 29.6 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Jul after 29.2 °C 28 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Jul after 31.2 °C 30 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Jul after 33.0 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Jul after 32.4 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Jul after 31.6 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Jul after 30.9 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Jul after 30.8 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Jul after 31.2 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
28 Jul after 30.9 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
29 Jul after 30.6 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 28 Jun 2026
After · 21 Jul 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 17 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 221 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 77: 5.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak221 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10224 µg/m³
Optical depth1.30
34567891011121314151617
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 211Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lucapa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 July 2026 and 14 July 2026: 10 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,394 hectares (193.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lucapa (19,491 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Satellite cross-check

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Public Domain). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.